META Trend: Through 2004, Fibre Channel (FC)-based storage-area network (SAN) deployments with SAN management tools will coexist with maturing IP-based SAN deployments (initially between FC-based SANs/switches). By 2006/07, 10GB+ IP will be the standard SAN backbone--with IP-based router technologies replacing FC switches, and SAN management subsumed within network management tools/suites.

Despite many unrealized SAN benefits (see SIS Delta 954, 11 Nov 2001), IT organizations (ITOs) continue to deploy SAN technologies (50% by YE02). Most ITOs struggle to fully understand how and what SAN management components should be used to develop and implement a cohesive quality-of-service (QoS) policy for storage services. Our research indicates 40% of ITOs have identified the need for more robust business-aligned storage management policies, but fewer than 5% have defined and adopted a business-driven, policy-based QoS structure for managing SAN services (e.g., backup, archival, accessibility, volume management) via a data and media center of excellence (COE--see EDCS Delta 1023, 26 Sep 2001). Storage administrators are forced to confront the harsh differences between managing direct-attached storage stems versus network-attached storage (NAS) and subsequently fail to make the proper correlations between business requirements and SAN management components. We believe ITOs most adopt a structured approach to evolve to policy-based SAN management.

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Through 2002, storage administrators will focus on implementing business continuity automation to support application service-level commitments, driven by increased scrutiny of business continuity capabilities with questionable delivery capabilities. Through 2003/04, ITOs must be prepared to support broader-based QoS policies that address allocation of capacity versus allocation of devices (i.e., storage virtualization). Users can expect storage vendors (e.g., EMC, HDS) and tool vendors (e.g., Tivoli, Veritas) to introduce policy-based management tools through 2003. By 2004/05, ITOs must address global SAN management and data security issues, because SAN islands are connected via commercial communications facilities. Moreover, as QoS becomes mainstream, businesses will demand support for event correlation between data abstractions (file systems and databases) and physical SAN components. Long term, the increasing complexity of SAN environments will render an ad hoc, task-based approach useless and force management policies to be defined in QoS terms.

ITOs must begin to support this journey now by changing the role of storage administrators to act as business and technical component translators. The storage administrator of the future will interface with technical subject-matter experts (SMEs--e.g., systems, database, applications, network) to negotiate storage, continuity, and I/O requirements. The storage administrator will be responsible for configuring and maintaining the storage network using the management components to deliver the agreed-to service levels. The administrator's primary tasks should be to set the overall policies according to which automated tools self-manage the SAN and react to exceptional situations for which no policy exists. The large number components mandates management must occur by exception rather than inspection. Building a cohesive, manageable QoS storage policy will require manipulation of various SAN management components.

Discovery, Inventory, and Asset Tracking Automated tools (e.g., from EMC, Legato, Tivoli, and Veritas) are critical to the success of an accurate, manageable SAN infrastructure. Virtually every component in a SAN environment is an "intelligent" device driven by firmware and software. The heterogeneity of most SAN environments mandates the storage administrator maintain an interoperability matrix to plan upgrades and changes to the SAN infrastructure to minimize the impact of incompatible versions. The storage administrator will be responsible for optimizing storage capacity and I/O bandwidth as well as helping build a view of the SAN environment.

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